View Vacancy - Pro-Consul (FRA18.731)

The British Embassy in Paris is part of a worldwide network, representing British political, economic and consular interests overseas. It is also part of the UK’s France Network including offices in Lyon, Bordeaux and Marseilles and representation to international organisations in Paris (OECD and UNESCO) and Strasbourg (CoE).

The British Embassy is currently looking for a Pro-Consul to work in the consular team in Bordeaux, part of the France Consular Network which provides a high quality, professional and efficient service to British residents and over 12 million annual British visitors that travel through France.

As a member of the Consular section, you will be part of the team responsible for ensuring that a high quality consular service is delivered to British nationals in the Bordeaux Consular District (covering 20 depts. in south west France). You will work closely with the Pro-Consul and Consul, assisting them in delivering Bordeaux’s objectives under the Consular Strategy and France-wide business plans.

The successful candidate will be working in a fast-paced environment, where the ability to work under pressure and a high resilience to trauma are vital. S/he will often have the chance to make a direct difference to someone’s life in very challenging circumstances, and to sometimes deal with extremely sensitive cases or respond to crises.

Main duties and responsibilities:

• Assisting and supporting British nationals and their families in a wide range of emergency and non-emergency situations such as hospitalisations, deaths, rape and sexual assault, mental health, victims of crime, welfare and detainee cases. Whilst the majority of this work is handled over the telephone, often dealing with distressed and vulnerable customers, this work includes frequent prison visiting, some hospital visiting, attending police stations or other face to face assistance;
• Issuing Emergency Travel Documents and dealing with a variety of customer needs. This work involves direct contact with the customer in person, handling several customers at a time and providing support to other Pro Consul to ease the work flow of the busy consular reception;
• Dealing with incoming correspondence from British nationals, local French authorities and some UK authorities on a wide range of consular issues;
• Duty Officer on the Duty Roster for the France consular network (approx. one week every 2 months, Friday to Friday including the weekend). This work involves being on duty to handle out of hours emergency calls escalated to Post by our global 24/7 response team in London;
• Liaising with and proactive outreach with French authorities and other organisations, including NGOs and the British community;
• Working on public campaigns to prevent problems and communicating effectively with the British public via social media;
• Preparing for and responding to mass casualty incidents and other FCO crisis responses. This can involve out of hours work, deploying at short notice to the incident and supporting victims and their families.

• Excellent communication and customer service skills, including an ability to support customers in traumatic or difficult circumstances;
• Fluency in written and spoken English (C2) and French (C2). Language skills will be tested during interview process;
• Ability to work at pace, in a team but also alone and ability to prioritise, managing an often heavy workload;
• Flexible, resilient, patient and able to deal with difficult situations, including work unsocial hours in an emergency;
• Ability to work collaboratively work with colleagues in France, Wider Europe Network and the UK as well as with local French authorities;
• Capable of adapting to changing priorities and able to work under pressure;
• Able to display a high level of discretion and responsibility;
• Excellent attention to detail;
• Computer literacy in all Microsoft packages and accurate typing skills;
• Ability to travel in France and within Europe.